Only one sport in collegiate athletics has its athletes call their own game: tennis.

In professional tennis there are up to 11 officials for a match if the match is on center court or in a later round in a tournament. Although college tennis does have officials, there is only one chair umpire per court.

The main purpose of the chair umpire is to assist the tennis players make calls.

Head Coach Lisa Hart said this responsibility for players to make their own calls stresses sportsmanship. This falls within the guidelines from the NCAA about showing good sportsmanship in being honest if the ball was in or out, because players could theoretically call balls which narrowly land on the line as out of bounds.

“When we play in bigger matches it is not prevalent, because the sportsmanship is good so the matches are fair. When we play rivalry games the sportsmanship is even better,” Hart said.

The problem with trying to get more officials or better technology is the cost will increase. There are also many matches during a season which are broken down to even more matches in order to find a winner.

Still the importance of having more than one referee per court is something tennis players would like to see in the future.

Senior Lize Leenknecht felt like more eyes focused on whether the ball lands in or out wouldn’t hurt.

“Playing with more referees would be better because they could make calls would make the game more accurate,” Leenknecht said.

Senior Trang Huynh has been a key member of the women’s tennis team despite being a recent transfer student from Troy University in Alabama. Huynh agreed with Leenknecht, saying it would be nice to have more officials in important matches.

Every Cougar tennis player is an international student, with different experiences in tennis. Some players experienced different rules or ways the tournaments were run.

Huynh said there was a difference between playing in Vietnam and playing in international tournaments.

“When I played in my country there are referees but when I played in under-18 ITF tournaments we mainly called it ourselves until we got to the quarterfinals,” Huynh said.

Sophomore Donika Bashota has been lighting it up this season with the most singles matches won in a single season. Bashota explained her experience in Europe and the contrast she has seen in America.

“We had more officials than we do now. When I played in international tournaments we had a referee who called every single ball and the score,” Bashota said.

For now there will only be one umpire per court but in the future the NCAA may add more officials depending on the situation of college tennis in the future.